a blessing reminder

Deut. 12:7 “ Feast there in the Presence of God, your God. Celebrate everything that you and your families have accomplished under the blessing of God, your God.”

Too often we forget that all we have and all we have accomplished is b/c God has allowed us to do so. As a Christian I need to always be mindful that everything accomplished is done so under the blessing of God. Therefore I need to be always giving thanks and praise to God; forever sharing with everyone around me the message of the blessing of God.

Celebrating God's Unstoppable Plans

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, is the light;
Stronger than the wrong, is the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter Day.

Phillips Brooks

This joke came through my inbox and it made me think instead of laugh...

Two boys were arguing when the teacher entered the room. The teacher asked, "Why are you
arguing?"

One boy answered, "We found a ten-dollar bill and decided to give it to whoever tells the biggest lie."

"You should be ashamed of yourselves," said the teacher.
"When I was your age, I didn't even know what a lie was."

The boys gave the ten dollars to the teacher.


How often does an authority figure overstate the case and in the end miss the opportunity all together and lose credibility.

Disservice by the Church pt. 2

I am seeking to try to understand the entertainment phenomenon that is sweeping the North American church. What do rock climbing walls and coffee shops have to do with worship of God. How did first century churches manage to spread the gospel far and wide w/o these types of things? How does the underground church of China and North Africa continue to grown in believers?

I honestly believe a whole mess of churches have missed the point are allowing the members of our churches to tell how to run the church. I also think our affluence has led us to trust in our money and our fancy programs and brochures as opposed to times of discipling one another, worship together quietly, and seeking to hear God's voice.

Lord please forgive us, turn us back to you. Have mercy on us, but do not be so kind as to not firmly rebuke us for our sins

Disservice by the church

Lately there has been a nagging issue in my heart. What nags at me is the fact that is seems as though churches are becoming primarily judged on the basis of entertainment and felt need. Maybe I am wrong, but over and over I hear people talking about how churches are not doing this or that well enough. As I talk to these people and as I listen to the stories I think "Do these people really think that is the point of a church?"

So the next few posts will explore some reasons why I think this is happening and how the North American church needs to respond. I would love to hear what you think about my observations and feel free to point other people to this blog to leave their feedback as well.

My first observation about how this became a problem is this; the church of North America did this to itself. Okay so maybe that is a slight overstatement, but I am not sure it is too far off.

First I believe the church bought into the worldly idea that "size is success." In doing so they church became just like any other business aimed to bring people in. The church is now driven by its consumers. If they want coffee, they get coffee and coffee breaks. If they want entertainment the youth departments put in big screen tv's and hold video game tournaments with using the latest hit video game. (even though it involves graphic violence and murder) The church did this to itself. Even if your church is not involved in the latest fads of pop culture can you not honestly see places where the church is making huge accommodations to people who are complaining about some minor issue in the effort to keep as many people in the doors as possible. Weak leadership has led us here.

more later, but how am I doing so far.

Wisdom of Lincoln

Here is a gold mine of truth in what otherwise looks like a rock on the side of the road.

"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb... in other words, that He renders the worst human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable."
- Abraham Lincoln

as quoted in With Malice Toward None - Stephen Oates

New Year, New Expressions

In the midst of this old darkness the past is slipping away

I await the dawn, and its new mercies each day

But in this night I find myself seeking,

following but one star in the sky,

A light for my way, a light shining for all the world

This Star keeps leading me on a Pilgrim’s Journey,

and as long I follow I am ok,

for when I stray a chill bruns through me,

the Voice of the Star speaks to me.

A voice of correction I have learned not to ignore

I’ve found the Star loves me even enough to teach me.

I don’t know what I will see on the way or what I will face with each coming day.

but the Star keeps on guiding and I have learned by abiding,

to just keep on plodding this straight narrow way.

I don’t know where the Star will lead you,

nor do you know where it will lead me

But this I know, I must keep following that Star

and I would welcome your company…

Wishing Christmas

This season I want to take a moment to say Merry Christmas to each person who reads this. May each of you come to see why this holiday is more than a holiday. May you see it as God at work, powerfully, in the world he created for us.

God be with each of you

Mark

Snapshots of a church

There are times when you are see something in life that really captures a moment. Today while at church I saw this...

There sitting about six rows from the front of the church was a middle aged woman bowed in prayer and there sitting next to her was a ninety year old widow who has been at this church for sixty years praying for her. Both of them were totally focused on the moment the younger woman removed her glasses mid prayer so to be able to wipe away the tears that were now streaming down. There was in that moment a complete look of peace on their faces.

That is my snapshot of the meaning of church. I doubt I will ever forget it. When was the last time you saw that at your place of worship. When was the last time you were one of the two people described

God be with us in this life

Church???

I want to share this with you and please tell me if you agree or disagree.

this comes from Eugene Peterson - you should read at least one of His books

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns–how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.”

God be with us All

let's see what happens when...

What if I just start writing. No Real agenda or point to make just a writing out my thoughts.

Hmmm....

Sometimes I wonder why the Bible says relatively little about things that we think are so important. Maybe we like so many pharisees and saducees are missing the point. Maybe not entirely missing the point but missing the point on certain issues. I wonder...

I love new ideas and new places to check out on the net so maybe now is a good time to intorduce to some great places I like to go and to invite you to check out a few great organizations.
No real order to these other than this is the order they came to mind.

International Justice Mission
- On a Mission to bring God's Justice to the World - give them $$$
(Not pocket change either the stuff you spend on yourself. Skip a meal out and send them a check)

while at iTunes check out the

CBC Radio Podcasts for the Program "IDEAS"
Emergent Village Podcasts

or listen to some sermons by John Piper. I really like a lot of his preaching.

So what else...

Places to do some reading of ideas worth hearing

The Other Journal
Broken Stained Glass
Pajama Library
the eBay atheist » Blog Archive » Willow Creek


Random thought:

Christianity needs to put its work clothes on. (heard in a Sunday Sermon)

Next time you hear a sermon about God wanting to bless your life ask yourself:
"If I lived in Sudan where the Muslim Gov't were trying to kill me or enslave me b/c I am Christian how would I interpret this sermon?"

God Bless you and be with you all

love for God is love for others

I have been challenged in my heart of late to practice love. To love meaning to do good for others no matter who they are, or what they have done, or may do, or are doing. To give my best to them. To hope the best for them. Not simply to do no harm or to think no ill of them, for that is what love can so easily come to mean. To bless everyone I meet by the way I think of them, talk to them, and what I am able to do for them. I am challenged to truly love as God loves. To love and not condmen even every one of us has faults worthy of condeming.

It seems to me like this is the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God. He loved people, he did not condone all their actions but neither is he condemning to them, yet somehow so many of these people saw their need to change. Why do christians feel as though we need to be the group that condemns and points out the worse in everyone and everything. Why wouyld anyone want to attend a church like that, or what is more, serve a God that is like that. I do not think our God is like that. He is loving without condmening. When face to face with God we all see not with our eyes but with our hearts where we need healing and then our God transforms us into his image.

views from the inside

Have you ever worked hard to decorate something, create a piece of art, plan and execute a festival or event? When you are doing these things it is next to impossible to see the true effect of it. Or maybe another way to state the last sentence would be to say there is no good way for you to be objective about what you have accomplished.

I wonder and believe to be true that we as people have no way of understanding who we really are in the order of creation. For example, we look at nature and see a stunning display of color, shape, and sound. We are awed by it and call it beautiful. But what if nature looks at people and calls us beautiful. What if nature realizes a truth that we are not able to observe because we are on the inside. That truth being that you and I are the sons of God. Maybe all of the rest of creation is in awe of you and I as we follow Christ and are even "hidden in Christ". I think people are far more beautiful than people can realize.

C.S. Lewis writes in his article The Weight of Glory "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which...you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as now you meet...only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. ... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal... it is with immortals we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

As we follow Christ daily we become the latter, without Christ we can only become the former. So, there is no room for those who follow Christ to be proud of themselves for without Christ we are monsters. In Christ we are being transformed into creatures of incredible glory and splendor such as now exists only in our minds as a thing we long for, believing it to be true, but with no way to comprehend the truth of its effect on us.

For today this is what is rattling in my mind
God be with you

so limited

So often I feel so limited, so trapped, so small. Then today as I was praying the Holy Spirit brought to my mind the story of Moses. Specifically how he kept trying to talk god out of using him to secure the release of the Israelites from Egypt. Then the Holy Spirit guided my own mind to ponder how many times have made myself useless simply by not allowing myself to take a step of faith. In the midst of my thoughts I very often become paralyzed by what may not work. Sure I need to analyze a situation or opportunity, but I do not need to be paralyzed. I think my life could be so much more fulfilling to myself and others if I only let go of my insecurities and self doubts and allowed God to work more fully through me. Moses is a great example of this to me.

What if...

I love the following story it is truly a picture of the world in which we live and the world in whcih we should live. May we all grow older and wiser like this...enjoy...

His name is John. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of college. He is brilliant. Kind of esoteric and very, very bright. He became a Christian while attending college.

Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative church. They want to develop a ministry to the students, but are not sure how to go about it. One day John decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his T-shirt, and wild hair. The service has already started and so John starts down the aisle looking for a seat. The church is completely packed and he can't find a seat. By now people are looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything. John gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit and when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet. (Although perfectly acceptable behavior at a college fellowship, trust me, this had never happened in this church before!) By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.

About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward John. Now the deacon is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair, a three-piece suit, and a pocket watch. A godly man, very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and as he starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying to themselves, "You can't blame him for what he's going to do. How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?"

It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy. The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man's cane. All eyes are focused on him. You can't even hear anyone breathing. The people are thinking, "The minister can't even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do." And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty he lowers himself and sits down next to John and worships with him so he won't be alone. Everyone chokes up with emotion. When the minister gains control he says, "What I'm about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget."

time to Ponder?

"In prayer I am brought into the dynamic life of the Trinity through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus, who cries out from within my soul: Abba, Father. The spirit of Jesus links me into the Blessed Trinity. When God looks at me, he desires me and is saying: You are desirable. I made you good. I want you. God sees me as his daughter or son, whom he loves. He says: You are mine. His gaze says: I delight in you. Can I accept this gaze of love? Or do I run back into disapproval of myself? His gaze is like sunshine: can I rest in it, bask in it, enabled by the Holy Spirit?"

pasted from: sacredspace.ie

Mystic Moments

Today I prayed for a while at an unusual place and at an unusual time. I needed to pray. I needed to know God was with me and in me. So in the back of this Roman Catholic Cathedral I knelt down and began to pray. There was no one else there but in moments I felt as though Jesus Christ stood right in front of me. No words came from him, he was just there. I guess it was like when Jesus suddenly appeared to the disciples after his resurrection. All of the sudden he was there. Emmanuel - God with us. Always

This experience reminds me that for all of the study in the world about the Bible and theology the Christian faith is mystical. It is beyond description, classification and analysis. It is mystical. It is by faith that we believe and live. By faith we believe in God. Because of faith we pray to God.

I truly believe I met with Jesus Christ yesterday. I can't prove it and what is more I feel no need to prove it to any of you. I was there and it was a mystical experience only understandable by faith. The mysticism of our faith leads me to think that no matter what is ever written about our faith it can never be fully explained because you must have faith and faith is mystical and mysticism is impossible to explain. There are so many denominations fighting with and against each other to try to define the Christian faith. I think they all fall off the rails when they forget that the Christian life is more than a set of doctrinal truths you give mental assent to. It is a mystical life of faith. The Christian life is a return to the garden of Eden for a walk with God in the cool of the day even when you know there is no garden and the day is not cool. Still in the midst of this life in some way we walk with God in the garden. To try to explain that is not possible it is not a doctrine it is indescribable...

When God changed your life was it not mystical beyond all reason?

Unity of the Faith

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

He said, "Like what?"

I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?"

He said, "Religious."

I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

He said, "Christian"

I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

He said, "Protestant"

I said, "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

He said, "Baptist!"

I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

He said, "Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!"

I said, "Die, you heretic scum!", and I pushed him off. - Ephesians 4:13

The Dawn

There are times that you are overwhelmed dazed and paralyzed. You are stranded not daring to go anywhere and then slowly you realized there is no needed to hide, or run. There is nothing to fear, nothing to dread. What you have been putting off, avoiding, dreading, is actually pleasant, worthwhile, healing. In those moments you are suspended in the hand of God while he speaks to your soul. As he leads you in prayers of repentance, as he heals the wounds never realized you had because you have been so busy with the fight of your life. Then you realize it is God that was pursuing you. He was not out to kill you, expose you, or humiliate you as you feared, but to heal, restore, and impart. Had you taken the time to look at your pursuer maybe you would have stopped, and maybe not. Too often you run for no good reason, often for no reason at all. In those overwhelmed, paralyzed moments you are suspended in God between the worries of this life, the failures of this life, and the hopes of eternity. It is as though the dawn of eternity has sent a barely perceptible ray of light upon you and it brings heal and strength. Then He sets you down, but the ray of light no longer to be seen, but still you are full of hope knowing it is coming. This was my morning.

Read; Reflect for a lifetime.

God be with us all and help us to see, spiritually, the work of Christ on our behalf which we were in no way deserving of.

Psalm 3:1-2

1 Lord, how they have increased who trouble me!
Many are they who rise up against me.
2 Many are they who say of me,
“There is no help for him in God.” Selah

- Charles Spurgeon from The Treasury of David (specifically referring to verse 1)
"This is a good place to remember the innumerable hosts that surrounded our Divine Redeemer. The legions of our sins, the armies of fiends, the crowd of physical pains, the host of spiritual sorrows, and all the allies of death and hell battled the Son of Man. How precious to know and believe that He has routed the enemy and trodden them down in His anger! Those who would trouble us have been captured. Those who would have risen against us have been laid low. The dragon lost His sting when he dashed it into the soul of Jesus."

3 But You, O Lord, are a shield for me,
My glory and the One who lifts up my head.

- Charles Spurgeon from The Treasury of David (specifically referring to verse 3)
"Oh, for grace to see our future glory in our present shame. There is present glory in affliction, if only we could discern it. It is no small thing to have 'fellowship with Christ in His Sufferings'."